As many spin fishermen know, crappies can be selective and requiring of some finesse and very lightweight jigs. My favorite crappie flies are usually tied with some flash and almost always with very lightweight bead chain eyes. The pic shows an example of one of my favorite crappie patterns: about an inch in length, flashabou/tinsel wing, small bead chain, and some soft fur underbelly. In part, I like the bead chain to keep the hook upright and less prone to snag the woody cover where crappies typically hang out. White is always a good color and a bit of red or chartreuse seems to help sometimes. The small bead chain provides jut the right sink rate as crappies often seem to like a fly that almost seems to suspend. They’ll hit bigger flies but, at least in my experience, often won’t get the hook on flies much bigger than an inch. Keep your crappie flies small and lightweight so they sink slowly and get sucked in far enough for a solid hookup.

nothing special here-my crappie fly box is just a bunch of size 8-14 streamers (mostly clousers), a few poppers and foam spiders (biggest crappie I ever landed took a #12 black foam spider), and a bunch of size 10-14 wet flies, mostly just soft hackles.

sandfly wrote: I use a lot of different flies for crappie, but these are a few of my favorites.

I tie a fly similar to the first set for bluegills, but never tried it in crappies...just a size 10-14 scud hook with a brass or tungsten bead, a tail of rabbit clipped from a zonker strip, a Hare's mask dubbed body, and a few wraps of dyed grouse hackle, it's dynamite on my local pond.